The Influence of Arab Grammarians on the Creation of the Hebrew Verb System in Muslim Spain

The Hebrew verbal stem system and its various semantic meanings were of significant interest to medieval grammarians. Already Yehuda Ḥayyūj of the tenth century discussed this system and divided the verbal stems into ‘light’ (ḫafīf) and ‘heavy’ verbs (ṯaqīl). In his dictionary Kitāb Ḥurūf al-Madd wal-Llīn he lists all relevant occurrences of each root discussed, in all its verbal stems. For the first time in medieval linguistics Hayyūj lists eight Hebrew verbal stems – the seven verbal stems in use today plus an ‘eighth’ stem poʿel. Other medieval grammarians, including his disciple Jonah ibn Janāḥ, apparently followed in his footsteps. Tracing Ḥayyūj’s sources suggests that he was influenced by Arab grammarians. These tagged the first Arabic verbal stem– faʿala – as a ‘light’ stem, and tagged the following three verbal stems – faʿʿala, fāʿala, ʾafʿala – as ‘heavy’ stems (ṯaqīl) or as derivative stems (mazīd). Hayyūj aligned Hebrew Paʿal with Arabic faʿala, Hebrew piʿʿel with Arabic faʿʿala, and Hebrew hifʿil with Arabic ʾafʿala. To complete the equivalence between the Hebrew system and Arabic verbal system, Ḥayyūj defined for the first time a Hebrew verbal stem poʿel, as the counterpart of Arabic fāʿala. Unlike Ḥayyūj, Rabbi Abraham ibn Ezra held a different view with regard to this ‘eighth’ verbal stem (poʿel). A comprehensive systematic analysis of the various views of medieval grammarian towards this ‘eighth’ verbal stem was not published to date. Even studies dedicated to the views of individual medieval grammarians have not addressed this topic in full. In this lecture I will present be a broad systematic survey of the various views of medieval grammarians with respect to the ‘eighth’ Hebrew verbal stem. In particular the views of Ḥayyūj, Ibn Janāḥ (in his Kitāb al-llumaʿ) and Ibn ʿEzra will be discussed in depth.